This is not about our cricket team. Notice the singularity in the title. It is about "Vishy" winning the World Chess Championships 2007 in Mexico. This is the second time he wins the championship, the first time being in the year 2000 beating Alexei Shirov 3.5 - 0.5 in Tehran.
I remember way back in 1995, when he played his first championship match against Kasparov. He got visibly nervous, when Kasparov unleashed himself in the 10th game. They were playing the Ruy Lopez (Open Variation) and the game went; 14. Bc2! Qxc3 15. Nb3!! and Anand taking 45 minutes to respond with 15. ... Nxb3. Anand eventually lost the match as Kasparov established his hitherto unknown forte in the Dragon Sicilian defense.
Though I am a patzer, I have a lot of interest in the game. In those days the games got published in the newspapers and I used to cut the clippings and stick them in a notebook. However, due to lack of guidance I could not make much progress into these games. Now I have a powerful processor, all the games in PGN format, the necessary software to analyze the games, but no time to spend for the game! I find it very hard to concentrate on the board, 10 minutes into it.
Hoping that Anand wins a lot more matches, and inspires many more youngsters to take up this game seriously at commercial levels.
Kudos to him and his team again!
Great to see this post! I'm so sick of the flood of cricket cricket posting I could scream. That someone else who's also stuck it out for decades , and become a world champion, with a lot more conviction seems totally ignored. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteI never followed the game with the kind of diligence and detail that you have , but its a game I've always loved ( although I've had my Shepherd's mate at least twice! ) If there's anything on the sports page that catches attention except track and field, its chess :)